Product Details

• Actors: Oprah Winfrey
• Format: AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: Spanish, French, English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 4
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: June 1, 2010
• Run Time: 440 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0039UTDA6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,404 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Life" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Aided by breathtaking high-definition cinematography, the enthralling BBC series Life (from the makers of Planet Earth) explores the more colorful strategies the world's creatures employ to procreate, evade predators, and obtain nourishment. Cameras travel though the air, under the water, and right into the faces of insects, like the alien visage of the stalk-eyed fly. Except for "Challenges of Life" and "Hunters and Hunted," each episode covers a different category, such as mammals and birds. Among the more memorable images: three cheetahs move with the relentless rhythm of mobsters, a school of flying fish glides through the air with the grace of ballerinas, and a Jesus Christ lizard skips across the water, like, well, you know. The strangest sights range from a pebble toad bouncing away from a spider like a rubber ball and brown-tufted capuchin monkeys pounding palm nuts with stone tools like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

If the sound effects seem overamped, George Fenton's score is always on the money, adding humor and suspense at crucial moments (martial drums for the mud skippers, woozy brass for the Darwin's beetle). Nonetheless, delicate sensibilities may find some sequences disturbing, as when Komodo dragons feed on a water buffalo or when a leopard seal dines on a penguin. More often, the filmmakers capture the moment of impact before moving on. The set comes complete with 10 featurettes on the four-year production. This edition is narrated by Oprah Winfrey; the BBC edition is narrated by Sir David Attenborough. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Life (Click for larger image)

Product Description

From the BBC and the Discovery Channel, producers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, comes the newest landmark natural history series, Life. In Planet Earth, we brought you the world as you’ve never seen it before. Now, get closer with Life. Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continent and in every habitat, with breathtaking new high definition filming techniques not available for Planet Earth, Life presents 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world, 54 of which have never been filmed before. Packed with excitement, revelation and entertainment, this remarkable 11-part blockbuster, narrated by Oprah Winfrey, captures unprecedented, astonishingly beautiful sequences and demonstrates the spectacular and extraordinary tactics animals and plants have developed to stay alive.

DVD Features:
Deleted Scenes
Featurette
Music Only Track

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Big mistake, Oprah takes all excitement of Life away March 22, 2010

By L. B. D'Alba

I can not believe they had Oprah narrating this amazing series. The production is fabulous, the science behind it is superb, the stories are breathtaking but then the narration just makes the whole production to become a dull, high school biology class boring kind of video of which you feel required to write a report. It is a crime, is Sir. David Attenborough too British for the American audience? please...

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars What were they thinking? April 8, 2010

By R. M. Barge

It is simply incomprehensible why The Discovery Channel felt they had to remove the excellent narration by David Attenborough and replace it with a dumbed-down script narrated cloyingly by, of all people, Oprah Winfrey. Do they think that their target audience is preschoolers?

If you wonder why the US is falling behind other nations in certain academic fields, you have only to consider the thought process that led to creating this travesty. Shame, shame, shame, Discovery Channel.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars GET THE BBC VERSION!!! March 29, 2010

By Silus Cramford

In total agreement with the reviewing majority here. Get the BBC version. These series are amazing, and are the domain of Sir David.